Description

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Hands-On Production Support & Problem Resolution · Lead and actively participate in triage of payroll application, integration, data, access, configuration, calculation, timekeeping, and financial posting issues. · Establish the problem statement, business impact, affected population, timeline, recent changes, system of origin, data evidence, and immediate containment actions. · Perform or direct log review, data comparison, configuration review, interface tracing, file validation, schedule review, security analysis, and controlled testing. · Drive issues to permanent resolution, including root cause, corrective action, regression validation, monitoring, documentation, and lessons learned. · Ensure workarounds are risk-assessed, time-bound, approved when required, and replaced with sustainable corrections. · Use vendor escalation thoughtfully and maintain strong internal ownership of the business impact, investigation, communication, and final validation even when external expertise is engaged. · Participate in critical payroll processing windows, releases, cutovers, go-lives, and stabilization activities as business needs require. · Prioritize and sequence incident and remediation work according to business criticality, payroll-cycle deadlines, employee impact, compliance exposure, financial risk, and operational continuity, with clear escalation and contingency paths when delivery is at risk. Technology Leadership & Architecture · Shape and execute a payroll technology strategy and roadmap that improves reliability today while creating meaningful opportunities to simplify, modernize, and strengthen the employee and payroll user experience. · Own solution direction and design quality across configuration, extensions, integrations, reporting, automation, controls, and security. · Review technical designs and challenge assumptions, unnecessary customization, weak controls, unsupported handoffs, and solutions that shift ownership without resolving the underlying problem. · Ensure architecture and data flows between payroll platforms, Workday, SAP Finance, banking, tax, time and attendance, and related enterprise systems are understood, documented, stable, and supportable. · Identify and deliver automation, monitoring, self-service, reporting, and AI-enabled improvements that reduce manual effort and accelerate issue resolution. · Champion efficient and inventive solution design by looking beyond established patterns, testing practical alternatives, and selecting approaches that improve speed, reliability, maintainability, and business value without compromising payroll accuracy, security, controls, or compliance. Team Leadership & Capability Building · Lead, mentor, and develop payroll technology staff, technical leads, contractors, and service partners, building deep functional and technical capability. · Set clear expectations for ownership, responsiveness, hands-on investigation, documentation, communication, and measurable outcomes. · Review incident and delivery work for quality, help resources work through difficult diagnoses, and model effective, evidence-based troubleshooting practices. · Establish support playbooks, diagnostic checklists, escalation criteria, on-call or payroll-cycle coverage, knowledge articles, and cross-training plans that reduce dependency on individuals or vendors. · Assess capacity and skill gaps, shape sourcing decisions, and ensure external resources supplement rather than replace internal accountability. Delivery, Governance & Stakeholder Partnership · Lead payroll technology assessments, implementations, enhancements, releases, and projects using fit-for-purpose Agile and delivery practices. · Partner with Payroll Operations, HR IT, Finance, Global Finance Operations, Participations & Residuals, integration teams, information security, audit, and other stakeholders. · Own executive communication for priorities, service health, incidents, delivery progress, risks, decisions, and remediation plans. · Establish delivery plans and service commitments that reflect the criticality of the business outcome; proactively surface risks, adjust resources or approach, and implement recovery or contingency actions before a commitment becomes materially at risk. · Manage payroll technology budgets, Agile funding, contracts, statements of work, service levels, and vendor performance. · Ensure compliance with collective bargaining agreements, tax and payroll requirements, SOX, audit controls, information security, and data privacy standards. · Maintain decision records, solution documentation, configuration records, runbooks, support procedures, testing evidence, change controls, and audit-ready artifacts. SUCCESS MEASURES · Critical incidents are triaged quickly, technically owned, and driven to verified resolution with clear root cause and prevention actions. · The team demonstrates increasing ability to diagnose and fix issues internally, with vendor cases used selectively and supported by quality technical evidence. · Recurring defects, manual interventions, avoidable escalations, and single points of dependency are reduced through permanent fixes, automation, monitoring, and knowledge transfer. · Payroll releases and changes are well controlled, tested, documented, and production ready. · Commitments are delivered not only by the agreed date, but at the speed, quality, resilience, and level of communication appropriate to their business criticality. · Solutions demonstrate continuous improvement through simpler processes, reduced effort, thoughtful automation, practical innovation, and measurable gains in reliability or responsiveness. · Stakeholders receive clear, timely communication and have confidence in the team’s ownership and technical judgment. · The payroll technology roadmap improves reliability, supportability, compliance, and business value while simplifying the environment.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

· 10+ years of progressive experience in payroll systems, HRIS, workforce management, payroll technology, or related enterprise applications, including leadership accountability for production environments. · Demonstrated hands-on experience configuring, administering, troubleshooting, or implementing enterprise payroll or workforce management platforms. · Proven ability to personally lead complex incident diagnosis, root cause analysis, technical decision-making, and permanent resolution across applications, integrations, and data flows. · Deep understanding of end-to-end payroll processing, Hours-to-Gross and Gross-to-Net processing, controls, integrations, and U.S. and Canadian payroll requirements. · Experience leading technical professionals, contractors, managed service providers, and vendors while maintaining internal accountability for outcomes. · Experience translating payroll and business needs into configuration, technical requirements, solution designs, delivery plans, and support models. · Experience with integrations, file transfers, APIs, data validation, SQL or reporting queries, testing, releases, change management, cutover, and stabilization. · Experience managing technology budgets, vendor contracts, delivery commitments, and competing operational and project priorities. · Excellent executive communication and the ability to move effectively between strategy, technical detail, operational urgency, and people leadership. · Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Human Resources, Finance, Accounting, or a related field, or equivalent education and relevant experience. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS · Hands-on experience with Infor WFM and UKG Payroll; experience with both is strongly preferred. · Experience with Workday Core HCM or Compensation, SAP Finance, Cognos, Power BI, advanced Excel, SQL, or comparable enterprise integrations and reporting tools. · Experience supporting complex U.S. and Canadian, multi-entity, union and non-union payroll environments. · Knowledge of entertainment-industry collective bargaining agreements and their impact on time, pay, calculations, interfaces, and controls. · Experience leading payroll technology implementations, migrations, cutovers, go-lives, and stabilization. · Experience applying scripting, workflow automation, AI-enabled tools, copilots, monitoring, or analytics to improve support and delivery. · Agile, Scrum, ITIL, project management, payroll, or relevant platform certification

Key Skills

Education

Bachelor's degree